We Were Liars Paperback – May 29, 2018

“Live in the moment because life is short” - advice young people frequently hear. But is living in the moment always the right decision? If you're constantly living in the moment and making impulsive choices, couldn’t your actions spiral out of control like a tornado ripping through a town, destroying everything in its path? It’s important to consider the consequences of your actions before doing them because when the dust settles, you can see what you’ve truly done…how do you go back? In We Were Liars by E. Lockhart, Cadence Sinclair, the main character, wishes she asked herself questions like those before making one of the worst decisions of her life one summer at her beach house. E. Lockhart develops the characters so they each possess a distinct and unique personality, and the plot keeps the reader intrigued and on the edge of her seat throughout the book...until the surprise conclusion…The Sinclairs had a perfect little family that vacation on a perfect little beach, Beechwood, during the summer. They were athletic, beautiful, and rich. They walked in straight lines and held sophisticated discussions around the dinner table. They were the definition of quintessential. At least, they used to be. But everything changes one summer when Cady, Gat, Mirren and Johnny craft a foolish plan. Now, two years later, Cady is back at Beachwood for only four weeks. Four weeks to go through the twisting chaos of her memory and find out how consequential her actions really were. But after Cady finds out the truth, she finds that it was more beneficial to her fragile state of mind to be left in the dark. Friendship and family are important, but they are also fragile. What happened that summer? With her perfect family crumbling down around her, will Cady be able to overcome and accept what she did?The way Cady, Gat, Mirren, and Johnny are portrayed is vital to the success of the book. As you read, each personality floats out of the pages and can be seen as a reality. The reader can easily relate to the main characters, their emotions, relationships with each other, and struggles they go through. There are two main characters that especially pop out at you. The first one is Gat who was passionate, political, and ambitious, brings perspective, intelligence, and diversity to the island, “Not everyone has private islands. Some people work on them. Some work in factories. Some don’t have work. Some don’t have food” (Fantasy Island by Meg Rosoff). Gat is aware of everything going around him and wants to make a difference. He never lets anyone forget how bad the world sometimes really is, “You don’t know my bedroom with the window onto the airshaft…...You only know me on this island, where everyone’s rich except me and the staff. Where everyone is white except me, Ginny [the housekeeper], and Paulo [the gardener]” (103). He doesn't want to be perfect and put on fake smiles at dinner. Gat pops out of the book because of how different he is. Gat wasn’t a Sinclair. He wasn’t blond and rich. In fact, he was the complete opposite of a typical Sinclair and while some of the family couldn’t stand him, Cady fell in love with him.With Gat in the picture, Cady views the world differently. In my opinion, I think that Cady wouldn’t have made those mistakes and gotten into her accident if it hadn’t been for the way Gat influenced her and convinced her to take more chances without fully thinking through them.Not only are the characters important to the success of We Were Liars, but the plot is as well. Each good story must contain a strong, intriguing plot. There must be suspense, diction, and conflict. The plot E. Lockhart creates with her surprise ending will keep you on the edge of your seat until the very last page. When you start reading We Were Liars, the reader discovers that the main character, Cady, was in an accident. She’s been told that she hit her head while swimming. However, the reader and Cady, who are both limited to the information of what actually happened, start to question the sequence of events from the night of her accident, “I make a separate page for the accident itself…I must have gone swimming on the tiny beach alone. I hit my head on a rock….I was diagnosed with hypothermia, respiratory problems, and a brain injury…Did I really have a head injury from the swim, or did something else happen?...Was I the victim of some crime?” (77). Cady starts wondering about what really happened, and no one will help her remember, “Johnny stares at me oddly. ‘You don’t remember?’ ‘Her memory is messed up Johnny!’ yells Mirren……..No, no, shut up right now,’ Mirren barks……..’This is important! How can you not pay attention to this stuff?’ Mirren looks like she might cry” (94). Cady and the reader are limited to the information of the accident but discover that Cady’s mind conjured visions of Mirren, Johnny, and Gat to protect her from what actually happened that night. As the conclusion of the book comes, suspense builds and the ending is unforeseen.Your actions are important. Consider the consequences of what you’re doing before doing them. If Cady had done this, the place in her heart meant for family and love would not feel so empty. E. Lockhart uses Cady’s choices to make We Were Liars an unpredictable roller coaster from start to finish. I would recommend this book to someone who loves suspense action, and love.

I guess the best way to start this review is to be as blunt as possible: I actually really enjoyed my time with We Were Liars. I say “actually” because I was skeptical at first. After browsing Goodreads, there seemed to be two general reactions:1) “I love this book! It’s so good! Oh my god!"and2) “I detest everything about this book. Why is it getting so much praise?”So, me being me, I eliminated all expectations. I mean, the synopsis doesn’t give you much information to begin with, but I still wanted to be as open as possible. The end result? In short, We Were Liars is an intriguing novel that engaged me early on, kept me interested the entire time, and had me genuinely surprised at the end. The downside is the writing is a bit odd, which doesn’t seem like it would be a huge deal, but it did detract from my enjoyment of the novel as a whole.We Were Liars follows young Cadence, who is part of a wealthy family known as the Sinclairs. Her story takes place shortly after a terrible accident during Summer Fifteen, where she suffered something traumatic--so traumatic, in fact, that she has no recollection of what happened. So, it is her goal, and ours, to pick up the pieces and find out what happened that night, because the doctors feel she needs to come to the realization on her own.The problem I can see some people having with this novel is that none of the characters are relatable if you are not wealthy yourself, except for Gat, who is Cadence’s love interest. However, if I am being completely honest, where a novel like Don’t Try To Find Me treats the “problems” of its wealthy protagonists as real issues, We Were Liars goes out of its way to mock them, which makes most of their petty squabbles seem less problematic and more of what they are: greedy people acting selfish. In doing so, it helped avoid the frustration I would have normally felt reading about a group of people like the Sinclairs.Instead, it focuses on Cadence’s real health issues, which can essentially be boiled down to migraines, but these migraines are so bad that it leaves her nauseous and unable to move. If you don’t have a family member who suffers with something similar, it is easy to pass this off as her being over-dramatic, but it’s not. This is not to say Cadence doesn’t go a bit overboard on occasion, however, which is made clear very early on with this wonderful mind-f***:"Then he pulled out a handgun and shot me in the chest. I was standing on the lawn and I fell. The bullet hole opened wide and my heart rolled out of my rib cage and down into a flower bed. Blood gushed rhythmically from my open wound,then from my eyes,my ears,my mouth."This bizarre excerpt is the perfect example of what is wrong with the novel on a technical level: Lockhart’s writing is an entirely different level of weird. For starters, there is no indication that the above text is metaphorical until you read the next couple of paragraphs. It’s just Cadence being Cadence, which resulted in a loud expletive on my end. Also, if you hadn’t noticed, Lockhart hasA weird tendencyTo do thisFor seemingly no reasonAt all.Again, not a huge issue, but it is kind of an eyesore, and there is never any explanation for why the structure randomly switches up in the middle of a page. Lastly, and probably my biggest gripe personally, throughout the novel the story switches from present day to Summer Fifteen, but the reader is never given a sign of when a switch is made. This occasionally resulted in me reading one, two, or sometimes three of these “chapters” before I realized that we had changed years. So for a novel that generally succeeded in pulling me in, it really tried its best to simultaneously pull me out.With that note, I don’t feel I have much else to say except to try and brush-off some of the pretentiousness as rich white teenagers trying to be deep. Yes, it can get a little corny sometimes, but this is technically YA, so I think it’s safe to say that it kind of comes with the territory. In any case, as the reviews indicate, We Were Liars is definitely not for everyone—no book is, honestly—but there is something about its story that enamored me, and although there are a handful of flaws with how the book is actually written, I couldn’t put it down.